Reminiscent of Alaska’s infamous bridge to nowhere, Congress stands poised to repeat their spending folly with wind and solar farms… with no transmission lines to urban service areas, and inadequate capacitance needs.
Pelosi, Al Gore, and an army of DNC gullible, are hell bent on forcing the nation to create, in essence, and new national power grid in an unrealistic time frame. And if refusing to allow the oil and gas industry to increase supply vs demand (by allowing additional exploration, leases and drilling) and instead keep gas prices high, they can force a desperate nation into compliance for the impossible. That will be fine with them…. damned be the consequences.
Only one problem… installing the solar panels in the SW deserts, and the wind farms in T-Boone Pickens’ “greatest wind energy potential in the world” - the Great Plains in flyover America - doesn’t get that energy from point A to point Z.
Al Gore’s challenge to be totally weaned off a petroleum or coal based power grid in 10 years is lofty in ideals, but more soaring in rhetoric… nay, BS… than all Obama speeches combined. As Kevin Bullis pointed out in his Technology Review article, “Al Gore’s Inconvenient Plan”,
But in 2006, the most recent year with complete figures, four billion megawatt-hours of electricity were produced in the United States. Eventually, wind, solar, and geothermal power could cover this. But right now, they account for a little more than 1 percent of the total. Going from 1 to 100 percent will require not only building the wind turbines and solar panels and steam turbines for harvesting geothermal energy: it will also require massive new transmission infrastructure for distributing this power, from the deserts or windy plains, where much of this energy can be found, to the coasts, where people actually live. And it will require massive amounts of energy storage, since solar power doesn’t work well at night, and wind power is erratic.
In light of this scale, even some truly ambitious schemes seem like a drop in the bucket. Over the past couple of weeks, T. Boone Pickens, an oil tycoon, has been using some of his billions to run television ads supporting his personal energy plan for the United States. Part of that plan is his project to build what seems to be the biggest wind farm in the country. It would nearly double the amount of wind produced in the state of Texas, the state with by far the most wind power. But that project will only produce 4,000 megawatts of power. (Total electricity generating capacity in the United States is about 1 million megawatts.) And it won’t be cheap. To cover transmission-line costs alone for that and other proposed wind projects, the state of Texas plans to spend about $5 billion.
Needless to say, I’m sure we all realize who will be paying for these new transmission lines. Texans, yes.. and every other state that benefits from these new power grids. But the rest of us will also feel the costs with subsidies and tax credits - revenue lost from the federal piggy banks that Congress will want refilled from taxpayers elsewhere.
Right when you think the “save the planet” types were going to walk hand in hand with DNC leadership into a pollution free sunset, the next predictable battle rolls around. It seems alternative energy isn’t going to please the “greens” either.
So it comes as no surprise to read WSJ’s Review and Outlook piece today, Wind Jammers, which points out not only the obvious transmission problems… but the development of such being thwarted by the enviros themselves.
Only last week, Duke Energy and American Electric Power announced a $1 billion joint venture to build a mere 240 miles of transmission line in Indiana necessary to accommodate new wind farms. Yet the utilities don’t expect to be able to complete the lines for six long years — until 2014, at the earliest, because of the time necessary to obtain regulatory approval and rights-of-way, plus the obligatory lawsuits.
In California, hundreds turned out at the end of July to protest a connection between the solar and geothermal fields of the Imperial Valley to Los Angeles and Orange County. The environmental class is likewise lobbying state commissioners to kill a 150-mile link between San Diego and solar panels because it would entail a 20-mile jaunt through Anza-Borrego state park.
“It’s kind of schizophrenic behavior,” Arnold Schwarzenegger said recently. “They say that we want renewable energy, but we don’t want you to put it anywhere.”
The Guvenator is only now learning of the NIMBY problem? Where was he when, then Governor, Mitt Romney and Ted Kennedy strolled arm in arm to kill the Nantucket wind farm because it would decrease property values?
It doesn’t surprise me that my own backyard is doing the same… despite all our snippy nosed enviromentalists and being home to ELF.
Wind power has also become contentious in oh-so-green Oregon, once people realized that transmission lines would cut through forests. Transmissions lines from a wind project on the Nevada-Idaho border are clogged because of possible effects on the greater sage grouse.
Similar melodramas are playing out in Arizona, the Dakotas, the Carolinas, Tennessee, West Virginia, northern Maine, upstate New York, and elsewhere.
But the enviros may have just met their match… they are now going up against their own power houses… the Al Gores and Nancy Pelosis of the world. And of course, their new darling, former oil man T Boone Pickens.
And why? Money, of course. All are mega-invested in the alternative energy personally. Al Gore’s financial empire spanning the climate change/alternative energy is well known. T-Boone has a pretty good chunk of his own cash in the kitty as well.
Mesa Power, a company Pickens created, is investing about $2 billion in a Texas wind plant that will generate enough electricity to power about 300,000 homes.
He’s also invested some of his $4 billion wealth into efforts to establish natural gas fueling centers in California.
Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, who proposes to get 20 percent of Kansas’ energy from wind by 2020, introduced Pickens in Topeka.
She praised him for his vision and “bold new ideas,” as well as his willingness to put his own money on the line.
Someone ought to let Gov. Sebelius know that T Boone’s a savvy business man… just like Al Gore. He’s not doing this as an act of charity…
Then, of course, there’s Ms. Pelosi… not so unsavvy herself. Last year - well in advance of his current defection from the “big oil” fold publicly - she invested in T Boone’s clean energy corporation, CLNE. From her 2007 House disclosure statement, she purchased stock/assets valued then at $100K-$250K. (see pg 7 of PDF, Clean Energies Fuel Corp)
Estimated values today, per a Yahoo stock item (no longer available on the Yahoo News, but duplicated at DontGoMovement.com,) suggest that Ms. Pelosi may have tripled her investment in just over a year.
UPDATE 8/12/08 2:16 PPM
The initial offering may have been only 22,000 or so shares, but according to a Yahoo news item: Item 8.01. Other Events.On June 19, 2007, the Company issued a press release announcing that the underwriters of the Company’s initial public offering have elected to exercise in full their option to purchase an additional 1,500,000 shares of the Company’s common stock to cover over-allotments. A copy of the press release is attached as Exhibit 99.1 to this report and is incorporated herein by reference.
This means that Pelosi could have purchased around 20,000 shares at $3.86, or $50,000 to $100,000 worth, which are now worth 300% more than their original value.
Nancy Pelosi says that she is trying to save the planet and prevent global warming, but the reality is that, according to disclosure statements, in May 2007 she invested in T. Boone Picken’s clean energy fuels corp., CLNE, which is the sole sponsor of a proposal in California to funnel $5 billion in state funds and $5 billion in Federal funs to this corporation which will indirectly help them create a giant wind farm in the Texas panhandle.
I can’t vouch for that profit structure. Indeed, with the stock world bouncing up an down like an Obama bobble head, I’m sure that story changes daily. But it’s a real winner to get in low, and promises a healthy future for a product in demand… especially when you have investors with the “power of one” - able to guarantee that healthy future with legislation… not to mention the power to keep the US hostage to high gas prices.
But what is perhaps even more amusing a dichotomy is that CLNE is also heavily invested in liquid natural gas - another serious hot button for the enviros… Wonder how the Speaker feels about that.
What with all the rich and powerful, personally divesting themselves in this future energy grid, the enviros are bound to lose their battles and protests eventually. They may slow the process with lawsuits and civil disobedience. But they will, ultimately, lose.
Unfortunately, so will the rest of us. Unless we can keep producing, or increasing production, of what we use today… oil, natural gas, and coal… our transition to alternative fuels over time may just break the bank of the American economy.
“All of the above” is the only sane energy plan when we are at the mercy of an insane and corrupt Congress.
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